A take

A mate once told me:
     You've gotta have an opinion on things!

I was pretty young
and feeling pretty new
to the world,

and I felt ashamed and
embarrassed, to appear so

     empty.

I didn't feel empty.

Since then, a question from somewhere
buried deep in my marrow
has always haunted me...

     Why.

Why do I need to have one?
Why am I obligated to speak one?
Why should you care if I own one?
Why do you need to hear one?

I never felt comfortable
identifying myself by my opinions,
     only in the way that they're always changing.

There were times I tricked myself
into believing I needed some. To prove to the world
that person wasn't empty.

So I tried some on for size
now and then, speaking them boldly, and
almost as soon as they slipped off my tongue
     that person had slipped away.

I've always secretly identified myself by my addictions.

But addiction is a bad word,
so I can't tell people that

my addiction to surprise
is overpowering.
To surprise myself, to surprise others,
     to let myself be surprised by

my addiction to proving myself wrong
is to learn universal truths. Never to have been summoned
if not for taking a first step
and a microscope, to discover

my addiction to the unknown
makes me tiptoe. My addiction is
not in revealing it, deconstructing it
or putting it on display with my flag stuck in it,
but for giving it a smile and a wink
and time now and then
to play in it.

It seems opinions are cooly suited for the known,
the tangible. Contributing a take
on an event, something someone did or said
that incited a feeling,
an urge
     to contribute

songs of sorrow
and broken blood. Staggering stories
of dusky destiny.

Maybe opinions are another kind of addiction,
and at times a pretty useful one,
     if you ask me.


A poetry prompt from The Sunday Whirl.